The lag’s been cleaned up a bit in the WoW Beta. Or there are fewer people trying to log in and running around and it was improved for me so I could actually explore some.

I got the arrows my Death Knight needed collected really quickly. Killed a few more villagers, made some ghouls for the soul man. I’m feeling downright evil as a Death Knight, you know? Of course, granted, the Scarlet Crusade isn’t particularly the most morally righteous group. Still, villagers are villagers, and I’m a little conflicted about it. Surely there is redemption to be found. :)

I got to the cannons quest down on the beach and what’s happening to my UI really speaks to a lot of changes and additions to the game. Remember Call of Duty when they introduced vehicles? The wife still remembers the sound of tanks rumbling through small dorfs rumbling the house. The trajectory graphics, pitch, yaw, yow! This ain’t my grandma’s World of Warcraft anymore.

And, frankly, now that I’ve seen both, can anyone tell me who influenced who? Did Blizzard get the idea for the use of cannons from Warhammer, or vice versa? Or are remarkably similar techniques introduced at remarkably similar times in remarably similar games just a coincidence? And, I’m going to go ahead and say it, isn’t the Blizzard implementation just that bit more slick? If it just boiled down to graphics splash, and who doesn’t enjoy that, I think Blizzard won that. Now if that’s the best Blizzard’s got, and I haven’t yet seen the better implemented ballistics as I move on in Tier battles in WAR, maybe it’s a tie. And Warhammer’s ranged, at least the cannons, you actually target in sniper mode. The Warcraft cannons you basically relied on area effect damage, not direct hits. But you know what? Regardless, it’s fun and that’s great for the gamers.

And my Death Knight is slowly replacing his green starter set with the blue “graduate” gear. Almost there and I can then go check out the Outlands. I hope the OP feeling stays with me.

Msaker got logged on finally. The Horde start in the Borean Tundra is completely different from the Alliance start there. The layouts, the quests, everything. From my quick perusal, the Alliance get offered weapons to begin with, Horde get offered armor. I didn’t take too close a look at the other types, but the plate leggings had more crit on them then my epic pvp leggings. All the other stats were less. But still. First quest out of the starting gate, and a green offers an upgrade to one of my stats. And the starting area. Nice. Really, really different. I’m fortunate that I’ll be able to enjoy both sides, both starting scenarios, with my characters. I put my talents into the Protection spec to play around with it. It was still laggy, a lot of folks running around, so I couldn’t test the top talent, Shockwave, but the 2,000+ shield slam crit made me happy.